Wookyoung Kim in Conversation with Artist, Jiyoung Yoo
Jiyoung Yoo in her studio.
Jiyoung Yoo, an artist based in Seoul and London, graduated from Hongik University, South Korea with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, before completing her Master of Arts in Painting at Slade School of Fine Art, United Kingdom. Her experimental works use a variety of methods, such as printing, painting, cutting, weaving, and more. Jiyoung’s experience of the everyday object is demonstrated in her recent exhibition One After Another. By transforming and adding wit to common structures often taken for granted—from a clock’s time to a calendar’s date—Jiyoung’s work questions whether these objects function solely for our convenience. She invites the viewer to rethink the object’s individuality, as each component follows a uniform set of rules, rendering them unoriginal.
In addition, Jiyoung finds similarities between objects or behaviours and painting. For example, the cooking process, or the relationship between water and a cup, mimics a painting’s representation of the subject matter. Her work in the Spilled Water exhibition compares the act of taking contents out of a canvas to the emptying of water from a cup, drawing parallels between the relationship of cup to water and canvas to visual representation.
MADE IN BED’s contributor Wookyoung Kim talks with Jiyoung Yoo about her works, the creative process, where she finds inspiration, and future projects in the making.
April, 2019. July, 2019.
Both oil and acrylic on wood, plaster, 53x55x4.5cm.
Wookyoung Kim: One After Another is an exhibition featuring three-dimensional works made up of seemingly random elements, like egg-shaped objects and cups of water, alongside paintings and prints. Could you explain more about this exhibition and the artworks in it?
Jiyoung Yoo: The title of the exhibition One After Another is inspired by the fact that solid forms of matter cannot occupy the same area simultaneously, yet gas and liquid can mix in appearance. It is thought that depending on the nature of an object, its arrangement varies, and the nature of the object itself varies depending on where it is placed. The 2019 exhibition consisted of three groups of artworks: Anti-Sea, Bric-à-Brac, and a calendar series.
Anti-Sea (2019) aligns manuscript paper with the flow of thinking. The work identifies the similarity between the acts of writing and painting. When you write, letters are logically placed according to the lines and columns of a paper in rule, although thoughts may not appear as consecutively. I found this is to be equally true in the visual elements of painting, which represent an artist’s ideas, fixed to a rectangular frame.
For the calendar series, I considered the object’s function, which is to organise time. I interpreted, however, the flow of time as a liquid property without any boundaries, while the clock and calendar—divided by compartments and represented by numbers such as 1 and 2—show the date and time in set space. When we perceive time through these kinds of media, it changes how we experience it, as if this Monday and next Monday become homogenised. There are many moments between 1 and 2, so I created the calendar series to question the convenience of cutting and placing time in standardised space.
The series replicates the 2019 calendar, the year that I created the work. Each of the 12 panels was arranged in a 3x4 pattern, then coloured as one gradient, but displayed individually in the end. The exhibition tells the story of cutting the flow of time and making objects uniform. The concept of the gradient is more important than the meaning of the colour itself, pointing out the ambiguity of boundaries when going from yellow to green, even in nature. Commercial paints, however, are made for convenience by naming and arranging colours, such as Sap Green, Lemon Yellow, and Ultramarine.
I often use the egg as a motif. In this exhibition, the eggs are put into a 30-piece egg plate to represent their commodification. Once they enter the plate, they are perceived with a consistent, guaranteed quality. Even though they are inherently different beings, there is no unique existence. I related this to the standardisation of time into numbers 1,2,3,4, and 5 by overlapping and organising them as well.
The initial inspiration for my artwork started with my master’s thesis on the museum as a representation of the whole of history. The museum refers to history by exhibiting the pieces of relics from a particular period and region, juxtaposing them spatially in chronological order. I thought, however, that there are many gaps between relics to represent all of history, and the spatial juxtaposition of them made me wonder whether the concept of time in history was well-represented. It reminded me of a gap between the laws that we have designed to represent something for the sake of convenience and ease of recognition or use. The calendar does not represent the entirety of time, and the same goes for museums, writings, and so on.
Anti-Sea, 2019.
UV print and coloured pencil on linen, plaster, acrylic paint, gel wax, glass cup, 200x140x5cm.
WK: Could you tell us about your creative process?
JY: I am pretty result-oriented. Some painters look for the meaning of their works in process, while in my case, there is an image of the desired outcome first, and later I consider the materials needed to achieve a certain idea. I think of the most efficient method of execution, like when calculating whether to take the train or bus to get a destination. As a result, I use various media naturally because the property of painting, sometimes, is important, but sometimes not, and sometimes printing is more effective to express my idea.
I was often lost when preparing for the exhibition One After Another because I hadn’t made many three-dimensional artworks before, and I was using objects for the first time. I had worked with painting, which is quite predictable, but the 3D objects were not, so I had to experiment. I also made hand sketches in the conception stage, then organised them through Photoshop. More than half of the works started from computer files. As I couldn’t use a frame from an art supplier, I had to customise all the elements of my work. Overall, I found this style of work requires planning.
In the case of Anti-Sea, I overlapped a lined notebook page and inkjet printed papers. In Bric-à-Brac (2019), the papers were also overlapped then printed as a single image into a wallpaper. At this time, I chose papers as a material to recall the similarities between the writing space and the drawing space. In the case of writing, the flow of thinking is replaced by text contained in paper, and the papers gather to form a book. In the case of painting, I thought about how an artist’s ideas become visual elements contained in a canvas, then the canvas becomes part of a series in an exhibition.
WK: When you make art, you use a lot of computer work. What do you think about digital art?
JY: I am quite conservative about showing my works digitally. If I were the type of artist who was satisfied with presenting artwork in the form of a digital image, I would just work on digital files without presenting them in a physical space. In Anti-Sea (2019), for instance, the image that I created through Photoshop had completely different qualities and colours when printed on raw fabric. The combination of a certain fabric with the method of printing results in a specific texture and feeling. For now, this inevitable variation prevents me from showing my work digitally.
To me, the in-person experience of appreciating art is incomparable to art shown digitally, so my output remains physical. It was sad to discover many online exhibitions these days just provide an array of images, but it is also a clear trend, one I also gave consideration.
On the chopping board, 2017.
Inkjet print on canvas, Dimensions variable (2 panels each 200x120cm).
WK: You have shown a variety of artworks, changes, and attempts every year. Can you explain your development?
JY: In 2014, I created works mimicking the views on a digital world. On Naver and Daum maps, which are provided by Korean internet portals, some places like military bases or prisons are censored for security protection. I went to these locations, took photos of the same views shown online, then painted over the photos with oil paint to make them blurred like the censored images. Satellite Map Carpet Series (2014), likewise, was made by printing the mosaic views of the sites from the satellite map onto carpet. I also painted Instagram pictures with the idea of preserving them in a traditional way.
Since 2015, I recognised some changes in myself. I have started paying close attention to how the physical environment differs from the digital, rather than simply copying digital images physically. In screen images, for instance, light comes from behind, but in painting, I realised there is nothing behind it. It reminded me of the function of gift-wrapping paper, which exists only in itself for wrapping something preciously. With this idea in mind, Unwrapped Present (2015) divided the painting into three elements (frames, ‘surface’ or canvas, and pigments), so that each was revealed well. From then on, I began to work on the points that can be found in painting through comparison with a digital environment.
In 2016, I focused on how digital images are consumed rather than focusing on digital images themselves. I collected all the images and content I ‘liked’ or retweeted on Instagram and Twitter, separated them by the date that I interacted with them, and worked with such limited material images.
I naturally thought of cooking in 2017 after I cut and pasted images into units to compose a picture plane the year before. Finding commonalities between the actions taken with images I used in 2016 and the actions taken in cooking, I started to cut, overlap, and arrange materials to create my works. At this time, I also wanted to uncover the physical properties of an image. The image always represents something other than itself. By enlarging a small picture to show its texture or colour, the subject matter of the image became abstracted, and the image became more itself. My works in 2018 capture the relationship between a container and its contents. Just as a cup’s contents retain its shape, the visual features of a painting are limited to a rectangular frame. The Spilled Water series was carried out with the idea of what would happen if the visual elements inside a painting were poured out, like water spilling out of a hole in a cup. I intentionally the cut outs blurred to highlight the relationship between format and content.
A view of the Spilled Water exhibition in Seoul, 2018.
WK: You say there is a moment to be an artwork when you have doubts in your daily life. Could you tell us about how you get inspiration and how the inspirations of your life become an artwork?
JY: I tend to make my life monotonous. If there are too many events in life, I can’t concentrate well on my work. At the same time, I feel there is something wrong when I catch myself doing routine behaviours like cooking or cleaning. This serves as the basis for my work. There are so many directions for inspiration. I write all my thoughts and ideas down and allow them to digest. Nothing is immediately transferred to work, but there are times when something like a quote from a book comes to mind later on. That’s the moment when digestion is done.
In art history, I was interested in artists, like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who treat images as units, harmonising objects, paintings, and materials on the picture plane in their own way. I am often enlightened through conversations with others as well. For instance, my friends who work in sculpture explained to me that gravity is the greatest obstacle to creation as a form is made from nothing. I, as a painter, then realised the importance of gravity in a way I had never thought about. I wanted to make gravity visible in a painting. The reason for using the object in my exhibition was also affected by this idea about gravity.
I was also inspired by Marc Camille Chaimowicz's 2016 Serpentine exhibition, which crossed the boundaries of the craft and art that I experienced in my graduate program. I think about the utility of art. For a painting, I consider other benefits it offers aside from being appreciated.
Lee Ufan in 100, 80, 60, 40, 20% Opacity, 2016.
Oil paint and screen print on various fabric, wooden frame, dimensions variable (5 panels each 65 x 75 cm).
WK: What is your philosophy when it comes to your art? How does that penetrate your work?
JY: As for my work style, I enjoy finding the hidden elements and the different sides of an exposed form. I focus on the results created when I add structure to a form, which then affects other forms. While I intertwined and transformed some, others were left only influenced or mismatched.
My interests explore how set conditions like date and time become law, and how these conditions affect our perception of the world. So, I work with this recognition of daily structures in mind.
WK: What’s next?
JY: Ahead of the next exhibition in November, I am creating works based on how objects are organised in living spaces. It will be arranged in an easy-to-use way, depending on the utility of each object. Currently, I'm studying the similarity in the act of taking something off a kitchen shelf and the act of seeing something in a painting.
If I have a goal as an artist, it’s that I don't want to be the type who copies herself. I want to think enough before jumping into the process of making even if it means taking a break in between.
Also, I feel skeptical about the environment for female artists in South Korea, which, despite much effort, has not improved realistically. A platform was needed for like-minded artists to come together, so Louise the Women was created. The organisation’s mission is to connect female artists and shed light on their work, allowing individuals to share challenges they shouldn't be carrying alone. Artists, who are easily isolated, are working on programmes that allow them to collaborate and develop their capabilities. As one of the founding members of this platform, I hope to achieve better results.
Thank you, Jiyoung!
Imagery courtesy of Jiyoung Yoo.
Visit Jiyoung Yoo’s website and her Instagram to find out more about her work. To discover more about Korean female artists, please visit Louise the Women’s website and Instagram.
Wookyoung Kim,
Contributor, MADE IN BED